Find your own healthy. Rock your own road. Live your own life.

Month: May 2014

We are now back to mobile blogging! I don’t love using the WordPress app on my iPhone to blog, but since I’ve been driving to work more than taking the train I’ve lost my prime blogging time. So, we do what we can with what we have, to paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt, I think.

So, yeah, I’ve sort of given up on the train for now. Turns out that adding a half hour to my commute each way turned it from totally do-able to totally exhausting. Even though I dislike driving, at least I know it shouldn’t take more than an hour to get home, as long as there’s no major traffic issues. Plus, it’s kind of nice to wear what I want and leave when I want.

We had a super nice weekend and Mother’s Day over here. San Francisco weather was very cooperative. Saturday I got a sorta-Mother’s Day gift: a new bed! Hulk and I have been going back and forth forever about upgrading to a king-sized mattress, and finally decided to pull the trigger last week. We found our exact same bed frame in a king size on Amazon, and that was just a cherry on top. The mattress came over the weekend. Squish was very excited to “help” set everything up.

Don’t mind the disaster of a desk back there. I’ve kind of giving up on keeping things picked up anymore.

The best part? My leg has been relatively pain-free since we started sleeping on the mattress. At PT yesterday my therapist said that my muscles were so relaxed, it was a huge gain from last week. Months of pain, and all I needed is some routine self-massage and a new mattress. At least I know now, right?

Sunday some friends came over to celebrate Mother’s Day. Their daughter is Squish’s age, so the dads took the kiddos to the park and pool while my mom friend and I treated ourselves to mani-pedis and some swimsuit shopping. Then we ordered pizza and watched movies for dinner. Definitely the best Mother’s Day I’ve celebrated for myself yet.

Make it a great week, I hope I can check in a bit more often as time allows!

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Good morning! I’m on the train once again, waiting for the right moment to dive into the yogurt I picked up from Peet’s on my way to the station. I’m super hungry, but I don’t want to make a mess on the train. Gah, first world problems.

Yesterday and today I’ve changed up my commute a bit. Normally I ride my bike to Caltrain, take the train to Redwood City, then ride to the office. This works great as long as I’m feeling well. But in the evening the train is usually pretty crowded, and more often than not it’s standing room only. I’ve even had it where the bike car is too crowded to rack my bike, and I have to stand there and hold it the entire 30-min trip. Given my sickness (I’m not calling it morning sickness anymore since it’s not limited to mornings) and extreme fatigue in the evenings, I don’t want to be stuck in a hot, crowded bike car holding my bike and feeling like I’m going to puke/pass out any second.

I tried driving to work a couple of times, but what can I say? The commute driving is just as long as the train, traffic is stressful, and I’m spoiled by being able to work, blog, read, sleep, or do whatever during my chauffeured commute on the train. So I found out there’s a shuttle from the station to my business park I can take, and I can take bus from my apartment to the train station. It adds about 20 minutes to my commute, but it’s still cheaper than driving ($5 for the train plus $2 bus fare each way) and I get to chill and do whatever while other people worry about getting me where I want to go. Three cheers for public transportation!

Anyway, the real reason I’m here is to share some interesting links I’ve been looking at lately. It’s Link Love Wednesday! Because I say it is.

This was a great read last week. On Mark’s Daily Apple, he posted about being “stuck” in less than desirable habits and ways to break through the plateau. This was 100% me; I know what to do, I’ve done it before, but goodness help me I can’t seem to climb back on the wagon from time to time and stay there. I’ve been taking stock at my environment, habits, and routine to see what I can tweak to get me through this hump I’m in. However not feeling tired and sick might help my resolve, too. You never know.

Yesterday I stumbled on this post from Renee at Bendiful. I have so many feels on this one, I don’t even know where to start. First, you are awesome, beautiful, and perfect, Renee. Second, this is a big reason why I don’t read women’s magazines anymore. The two-faced attitude of the media/fashion industry is appalling. They’re just trying to capitalize on this “love your body” movement by selling products that are totally contradictory to the message of advertising. If we all thought we were beautiful and perfect, then we wouldn’t need wrinkle cream, fancy “30-day shred!” exercise programs, and Spanx. Then what would retailers market to us? They have to instill a sense of insecurity in us so we buy their product, thinking we need it and it will help us be better. Since I’ve stopped shampooing and using makeup regularly, there is a whole industry that I no longer need. What if we all realized our inner beauty and decided we don’t need all this powered and coconut-smelly “extra shine!” hair goop with god knows what chemicals in it and lotions that are weird chemical concoctions that guarantee cellulite loss? If we know we don’t need it, they can’t market it and make money. So they have to keep us trapped in this state of waning self-confidence so they can make a buck. We should all be Ambassadors of Body Love and give big beauty industry the middle finger. Okay, rant over … for now.

(source from Pinterest)

Okay, so I only have two links for today. But they’re good ones, go check ’em out!

As always, make it a great day! 🙂

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Happy Tuesday! I feel like I’m back from the dead, and we are in sore need of a nice chat to get all caught up, don’t you think? I’ve got my coffee here, so why don’t you get yourself a cup as well and we’ll dish on the latest happenings.

Giveaways!

I can’t believe that I forgot to mention it earlier, I won my first ever blog giveaway from Renee at Bendiful! I came home from Pittsburgh to a big ol’ box of assorted KIND bars 🙂

Whenever a package comes in the mail, Squish assumes it’s for him and starts jumping around crying, “Grandma! Grandpa!” because usually the package is a little gift from his grandparents. So he had to help me open it, and when he saw they were KIND bars he immediately wanted to eat them all. He got one.

I made him pose for a PR shot first. (Oh dear lord, I just realized he was wearing his “Hooters” shirt. Well, now you know what kind of parent I am, if you didn’t realize it already.)

I don’t think I’ve seen the doctor so many times as I have in the last week. As I mentioned last time, I came down with a really nasty case of strep when I was in Pittsburgh. It was so bad it migrated to my ears; I’m still hard of hearing in my right ear due to all the congestion. I was basically bed-ridden for almost a week. Coupled with the usual pregnancy symptoms of fatigue and morning sickness, I don’t remember the last time I was quite that miserable. But now I’m on the mend, and since this is the last week of my first trimester (woot, milestones!) I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll be well enough to get back to activity as usual next week.

Baby

All signs point to baby still doing well, mostly due to the fact that I feel like crap-ola 80% of the time. Days I puke are slowly outnumbering days I don’t puke. I’m a little nervous about all the meds I had to take while sick, if they may have unintentional side effects on the little Peanut, but if it weren’t for the miracle of western medicine and antibiotics who knows how I’d be right now. That aside, I am definitely outgrown of my normal pants, and had to pick up a nice pair of maternity in-between jeans at Old Navy a couple weeks ago. I really like them; the stretchy part is on the sides, so from the front and back they look like normal pants. I hope my work isn’t too annoyed at me wearing jeans more often than usual; that’s all that really fits right now. At least I haven’t resorted to yoga pants just yet. Next week I have another ultrasound and another checkup and I’m excited to find out about Peanut’s progress, and see some sea monkey pics!

Travel

Last weekend we spent some glorious time off the grid at a cabin in the woods north of Ukiah. Some friends of ours invited us up to spend the weekend with them and their little girl who is Squish’s age. It was a totally awesome and surreal experience to be completely off the grid with no electricity (there was propane and solar, so it wasn’t exactly “roughing it”), wi-fi or cell reception. The only use for my phone was as a flashlight in the country-dark night. Yup, this was the weekend.

Terrible, I tell you. Just horrible. Squish and his new friend tore the place apart, and it was adorable to see him actually playing and interacting with another kid. He also got to go on a bike ride with Daddy.

We are looking forward to this type of retreat again soon. It was the perfect thing for relaxing and reconnecting without modern distractions.

Workouts

I have done nothing in about 3 weeks. Well, I did do 30 min on the elliptical last Wednesday hoping the exercise would clear up my congestion. But I have been too tired in the morning to work out before work, and too sick AND tired in the evenings to consider going to the gym. I’m hoping next week I’ll start feeling better and feel up to light workouts again. I can’t go my entire pregnancy without keeping my strength up, or labor is going to be even more laborious if I’m out of shape! I might have to start sucking it up and getting to the gym despite my illness if I don’t feel better soon. Who knows; the activity might actually make me feel better.

Physical Therapy

I’m still going to physical therapy for my bum hamstring. It seems to be going well, and if I would just do my prescribed exercises I would probably be healing faster. But I’m forgetful and lazy, so it doesn’t always happen. Sitting in the car for 3+ hours Sunday coming back from the cabin didn’t make my leg feel all that great, so we did some extra work on it yesterday to get it back up to snuff. I guess I have a lot of muscular imbalance; my left leg is tighter than my right, so my right is over-working to compensate for it and that’s why my right leg is in pain. I’m supposed to do some hip and hammie-strenghtening exercises like clamshells and bridges, and massage my quads and calves with a roller ball daily. I think I need to set an alarm for myself every day so I remember to take the 15 minutes to work through my PT homework. I can’t remember anything unless there’s an alarm for it.

Whew! Okay, I feel caught up now. My coffee’s all gone, and the train is about to my station (yay commute blogging!). Make it a great day, and I’ll see you later!

Disclaimer

Um, this should go without saying, but I am not a Doctor. Nor an accredited Nutritionist or Dietitian. Nor any sort of Personal Trainer or professional in the fitness or health industry. Shocker, I know. The opinions expressed are all from my little head and are not to be used without the consult of a real Doctor, Nutritionist, or Personal Trainer.